Privacy Policy

JClub is a personal research-feed app. This policy explains what data the app handles, why, and the choices you have.

What we collect

You can use JClub without an account. As a guest, your preferences (journals, interests, saved papers) stay on your device.

• If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your name, email address and (for Google) profile picture, and we store your preferences on our servers so they sync across devices: followed journals, authors and institutions, interest keywords, saved papers and lists, keyword alerts, and notification settings.
• If you connect your ORCID iD, we read your public ORCID record (works, affiliation) to personalize your feed and enable citation alerts.
• If you claim a home institution, we store that choice. Separately, the library you choose for full text is stored as its own setting — your institution and your library can be different, and choosing a library does not change your institution. Article links open through the library you chose (or your institution, if you have not chosen one). JClub never stores institutional credentials — you sign in on your library’s own page.
• If you connect your Zotero account, we store your Zotero user ID and the access key Zotero issues to JClub for your personal library. JClub only ever adds items — it never modifies or deletes anything, and never writes to your group libraries.
• If you connect your Mendeley account, we store your Mendeley profile ID and the encrypted access and refresh tokens Mendeley issues to JClub. Mendeley grants apps a single all-access permission, so the token could technically read your library; JClub only ever creates documents in a “JClub” folder, never edits or deletes anything, and reads your library only to check whether a paper it was adding has already arrived.
• To rank your feed, we record in-app reading activity for your account — such as which papers you open, save or dismiss. If you enable notifications, we store your device push token.
• If you use Labs, we store the labs you belong to, the papers you pin to them (with any note and meeting date you add), and the first time you open a paper that was pinned to your lab from a lab screen, the lab rail in Discover or a lab notification. The open is used only to show your lab how many members have opened a paper and to decide whether to send you a reminder.

What we do not do

We do not sell your data. We do not track you across other apps or websites, and JClub contains no third-party advertising or analytics SDKs and uses no advertising identifier (such as the iOS IDFA). Your saved papers, lists, follows and reading activity are private to your account. The only things another user can ever see are what you deliberately share with a lab you have joined — see Labs below.

Your device identifier

When you first open JClub the app generates a random identifier and stores it on your device. It is not your name, email, phone number or advertising identifier (JClub does not use the iOS IDFA), it is not derived from your hardware, and it is sent only to JClub's own servers. We use it to count how many devices use the app, to measure sessions and retention, and to make sure a sponsored card is not shown to the same device too often. Deleting the app or clearing its data resets it.

If you receive one of our notifications and tap it, we record that it was opened — which kind of notification it was, and which paper or day it pointed to — against that device identifier, and against your account if you are signed in. We use it only to see whether the notifications we send are worth sending; those records are kept for 14 days before they become aggregate counts.

Our product-tip emails contain a tiny image and links that pass through jclub.com.au, so we can count whether each email was opened and whether its button was tapped. We store only that it happened — a first time and a count for that email — never your IP address or device details, and we use it only to see which emails are worth sending. Every such email has a one-click unsubscribe link.

Sponsored content

JClub may show clearly labelled sponsored cards from organisations we work with directly. They are chosen by our own servers: advertisers place no code in the app, receive no data about you, and cannot target you as an individual. So that the same card is not repeated at you, our server counts how many times it has been shown to your device, using the device identifier described above. We record when a sponsored card is shown or tapped — against your device, and against your account if you are signed in — and keep those records for 14 days before they become aggregate counts. Advertisers receive only those aggregate counts: never your identity, your reading, your interests or your saved papers.

Services we rely on

• Article metadata comes from PubMed (NCBI), OpenAlex, bioRxiv and medRxiv. Queries for article data are not tied to your identity.
• AI summaries and briefs are generated by sending article titles and abstracts (never your personal data) to OpenAI.
• Our servers and database are hosted on Railway; push notifications are delivered through Expo’s notification service.
• If you connect Zotero, saved-paper metadata is sent to Zotero (Corporation for Digital Scholarship) to add items to your library.
• If you connect Mendeley, saved-paper metadata is sent to Mendeley (Elsevier) to add documents to your library.
• If your library uses LibKey, the paper’s DOI or PubMed ID and your library’s LibKey identifier are sent from our servers to LibKey (Third Iron LLC) to check whether your library provides full text. Third Iron receives nothing about you; opening a full-text link takes you to libkey.io and then to your library’s sign-in page.

AI-generated summaries

To help you scan papers quickly, JClub can show a short, AI-generated summary of each paper (produced via OpenAI from the paper’s title and abstract). These summaries are generated automatically, may contain errors or omissions, and are not a substitute for reading the original article — please verify anything important against the source.

Content & copyright

The papers JClub surfaces — including their titles and abstracts — are created by their authors and publishers and remain the property of those rights holders; JClub claims no ownership of them. We display a paper’s full abstract only where the source’s license permits reuse (for example, open-access articles); for every other paper we show our own AI-generated summary together with a link to the original. Every paper links back to its publisher or repository of record.

Library access (full text via your institution)

When you claim a home institution, JClub opens paywalled articles through your library, and Settings → Library access tells you which of two mechanisms applies. Where your library uses LibKey (a Third Iron service), our servers first ask LibKey whether your library provides full text for the paper, and the link you tap is LibKey’s own — it takes you to your library’s sign-in and then to the article. That check sends only your library’s identifier and the paper’s DOI or PubMed ID, never your name, account, device or reading history, and we keep LibKey’s answer for up to 30 days so the same paper is not looked up twice. For libraries not on LibKey, we rewrite the link through your library’s own proxy address. In both cases you sign in on your library’s page: JClub never sees your password, never stores institutional credentials, never proxies content and never caches PDFs. Claiming an institution is optional and reversible — remove it in My Institutions, or turn library access off in Settings.

Connected reference managers (Zotero, Mendeley)

When Zotero or Mendeley sync is on, each paper you save in JClub is added to a “JClub” collection (Zotero) or folder (Mendeley) in your library. We send the paper’s bibliographic details — title, authors, abstract, journal and identifiers such as the DOI — never your reading activity, interests or anything else about you. Sync is one-way and additive: JClub never modifies or deletes anything in your library. We keep a record of which papers we have already added so we don’t add them twice; because Mendeley offers no duplicate check of its own, we also look up recently added documents before adding a paper there. Disconnecting in Settings deletes the credentials from our servers (and asks Zotero to revoke its key — Mendeley offers no revocation call, so its tokens are deleted on our side); deleting your account removes the connection and the sync records entirely.

Labs (reading groups)

A lab is a small private group you create or join with an invite link or code. When you join, the other members see your display name and profile picture and that you are a member. When you pin a paper to a lab, its members see the paper, your name, the meeting date and any note you add. Nothing else you do in JClub — your saves, follows, feed or reading — is shared with a lab. A lab shows how many members have opened a pinned paper, never who, and only when the group is large enough that the count cannot identify anyone. Lab owners can rename the lab, change its invite link, remove members and archive it; they cannot see your private activity. Anyone holding an invite link can see the lab’s name and member count before joining, so share links only with people you want in the lab. You can leave a lab at any time; papers you pinned stay in the lab attributed to you unless you remove them first. If you delete your account you are removed from every lab, labs you own pass to their longest-standing member (or are archived if you were the only member), and your name is removed from papers you pinned. We count lab activity — labs created, invite links shared, members joined, papers pinned and pinned papers opened — to understand how JClub is used; lab activity is never used to personalise your feed or to choose sponsored content.

Your choices & deletion

You can delete your account at any time in the app: Settings → Delete account. This permanently removes your account and all associated data from our servers — profile, follows, saved papers, alerts, activity and push tokens.

You can also sign out to stop syncing, disable notifications in system settings, and disconnect ORCID, Zotero or Mendeley, remove your home institution or turn off library access at any time.

Contact

JClub is operated by JClub Technologies Pty Ltd (ACN 700 683 165), Australia.

Questions or requests about your data: support@jclub.com.au